


human contact

by Companionable



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Catharsis, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Spoilers for Episode 64: The Frigid Doom, Vex'ahlia-centric
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-25
Updated: 2016-08-25
Packaged: 2018-08-10 22:00:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,958
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7862752
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Companionable/pseuds/Companionable
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Everything Vex'ahlia feels after their trip to the Feywild, and a much needed conversation. For someone as stoic as he is, Percy sure is good at talking about his emotions.</p>
            </blockquote>





	human contact

**Author's Note:**

> i had feelings after ep 64, and i sublimated basically all of them onto vex, the poor thing. if you guys hadnt figured out yet, i really like writing the scenes that i wish had happened live. sue me or whatever.
> 
> find me on tumblr [here](http://trickfootie.tumblr.com) and on twitter [here](http://twitter.com/tayttimus)

Just as suddenly as they had left, Vex’ahlia blinks and they’re back. Around them bustles, quietly, the recovering city of Whitestone; a recovering city in which she holds A Title, over which she has now a modicum of power and responsibility, and to a member of whose ruling family she owes a considerable amount of thanks. It’s been a terribly long journey in the Feywild, but at last, it has ended.

She turns, then, to give her thanks to Percival. Granted, she has already given proper thanks, in Scanlan’s mansion, outside the Moonbrush, after Vax’ildan’s wonderfully misguided attempt to convince her away from this... thing that keeps drawing her to Percy. But sometimes it feels like even the emotions felt and the conversations had in the magical mansion get left there, and Vex believes for a few short moments that speaking her gratitude out in the light of the Material Plane will make it more concrete. And so she looks to Percy.

And she sees there, plain across his face as it is upon Grog’s, the confusion and bewilderment of memory lost. She has little hope that he remembers giving her the title, but still she pushes along with everyone else to see if she can jog his memory. It wouldn’t be fair at all for him to forget, for those precious moments to be lost forever.

But it becomes clear, eventually, that there is nothing. The Feywild is a blank for him, and despite Scanlan’s best attempts, that is all it shall remain.

When they finally make it back up to the castle, amidst talk of Thordak, Vorugal, and the rest of the Chroma Conclave, Vex finds herself privately glad that Percy doesn’t remember. Him forgetting means that Vex doesn’t have to look too closely at what he might have meant by titling her, doesn’t have to agonize over whether he intended it as she took it, or if she was searching for some meaning that he never wanted. It’s easier this way, she tells herself, and deliberately does not wonder what is so easy about it.

Pike arrives, and they’re all so relieved to see her that Vex is startled by the realization that there might be something their little gnome cleric can do. In fact, there may have been something to be done all along, if Keyleth had brought her restorative magics with her. The theory is tested and proven on Grog, who relishes in his defeat of Saundor, leaving attention to turn on their human companion. And so Percy steps up to (or rather, down to) Pike, and bows his head so that her small, battle worn fingers can crown his head and press to his temples. There’s a brief pause and a moment where everyone holds their breath, before a flash of bright, warm light surrounds their two friends.

It’s in that moment that Vex catches herself afraid. What if it doesn’t work? What if Percy never gets to remember his first trip to the Feywild? What if he never gets to remember fighting the pixies, or traversing the Gilded Run, or anything about Garmeeli and Artagyn? And of course, that lingering fear: what if he _does_ remember giving her the title, but it was never intended how she took it? She finds herself unsure of which is the worse outcome. Worse than that, she catches herself hoping, for barely an instant, that the restoration fails.

But of course, Pike is a brilliant healer, and the restoration works, and Vex is pleased to see Percy so pleased to have his memories back, even with the mind-altering Scanlan has performed. She is only displeased to find herself dreading any conversation that might loop around to the title.

And then Vorugal flies overhead. And then decisions have to be made about where to go and what to do. And then they travel to Draconia, which leaves Vex’ahlia scarred by the sight of a friend impaled on a spear of ice. The Frigid Doom Vorugal is indeed, and when they arrive back in Whitestone, Vex dreams about Tiberius’ last moments, terrifying visions of the dragonborn frightened to his very core, but standing up for his people and his nation anyway. Sleep eludes her, and she marches down to the kitchens of Castle Whitestone, determined not to let such gloomy thoughts plague her.

It really oughtn’t surprise her to find Percy is in the same boat, but still it startles her to find him hunched on the butcher block, nursing a cup of hot tea. His eyes look haggard, his face drawn.

He looks up to see her and smiles weakly. “It is a sorry night indeed to find that the Mistress of the Grey Hunt cannot catch a wink of sleep.”

The mention of the title stirs up thoughts of conversations that should not be had on so recent a heartbreak. “Sadly, I cannot mark sleep as my quarry as I might a dragon.”

“More’s the pity,” Percy says, gruffly, and sips at his tea. He gestures at the stove. “There’s more water, if you’d like a cup. It should still be hot.”

She’s more of a coffee drinker herself, especially when the beans come from Ank’Harel, as they tend to here in Whitestone, but at this hour the thought of coffee chafes at her sleep-deprived insides. “That would be lovely, actually.”

Her intent is to make it herself, but Percy is moving before she has time, placing a jar of honey on the butcher block beside her mug. “I find it much more soothing when sweetened with honey,” he says simply, and pours water through the tea leaves into her cup.

The night is quiet around them, the castle silent but for patrolling guards and the occasional servant. Vex sips her tea with Percy, and finds herself calmed by it. Or perhaps it’s the company.

“Did you know,” Percy starts, seemingly just as startled to speak as Vex is to hear him, “that Tiberius and I used to swap workshops on occasion? In the Keep.”

They’ve all been unintentionally avoiding saying his name too much since Draconia, and Vorugal’s nest. Vex decides that’s a paltry way to honour him. “I didn’t. How did that work?”

Percy laughs and sips his tea, not looking at Vex at all, but straight ahead and out the window in front of them, overlooking the city. “It didn’t, mostly, but it often ended up being the change of pace we needed to kickstart our respective efforts. I would see what magic artifacts he was working on and nudge things as I understood them needing nudged, being a non-magic-wielder myself, and he would do the same for me, being unlearned in the natural sciences and machinery.

“Nine attempts out of every ten, we ended up irreparably fucking up whatever the other was working on, and it was only out of re-working from the ground up that we ended up getting anywhere with our endeavours.” He pauses, and looks sideways at Vex, over the rim of his glasses. “But every once in awhile, I would come down to my workshop to find he’d seen some terribly obvious thing that I’d missed in my inventions, and I’d have next to no work left to finish it.”

Vex chuckles, drinks her tea. “He was a remarkably intelligent man.”

“Absolutely the _stupidest_ intelligent man I have ever known,” Percy says, chuckling as well, and in short order he and Vex are laughing in the middle of the kitchens, drawing the attention of the patrolling guard and wandering servants.

How laughter turns so easily to tears, Vex’ahlia will never understand, but she soon finds herself crying with some force. It’s not just Tiberius; it’s Vorugal and it’s Saundor and it’s her father, and the whole Chroma Conclave. It all wells up inside her, and expels itself down her cheek in ruddy tear stains.

Percy’s arms reach up as if without his permission, and envelop her. She relaxes into him in kind, and the tears come with more force and vigor for the comfort it brings her. It feels safe to be weak when he’s holding her, it feels acceptable. Which, she will think later, is probably something to examine, but in the moment it is only a much needed solace. Vex looks up when her sobs have quieted, and finds matching tear stains down Percy’s own face, though she hadn’t heard nor felt a thing from him while she cried. “How do you manage?” she asks, hushed. The kitchen is so quiet by now that anything louder than a whisper feels intrusive.

“Manage what?”

At a bit of a loss, Vex chuckles softly and gestures in the vague direction of Percy’s face. “To keep it all in? If I come anywhere near to tears it’s the bloody waterworks, but this is the most I’ve seen from you ever. Even after...” she hesitates, but proceeds anyway, caution already thrown to the wind, “after being reunited with the sister you thought long dead.”

Her forward statements must startle him, because Percy takes a moment to look shocked and actually takes a prolonged moment to gather the proper words. She knows he’s looking for the right ones to say, because he’s absently rubbing her arms and his nose is all scrunched up, pinching the corners of his eyes. It’s the expression he tends to wear when he’s _trying_ to be quotable. “The truth is, my dear, that if I let myself feel anything too strongly at this point, I would never stop.” His soothing motions stop as his face smooths and he looks out the window onto the moonlit Whitestone, then resume a moment later. “I would feel every emotion I’ve suppressed to preserve myself and my faculties, every ounce of pain I’ve brushed aside to accomplish my tasks. It started with the deaths of my family, where I had to not feel to survive. From there it became controlling my anger so that Orthax would not control me. And then...”

Vex rests her cheek on Percy’s shoulder. She’s in the tunic and pants she wears under her robes and armour, nearly ready for sleep, and he’s in the shirt he wears under his waistcoat and ornamented coat, a few buttons at the top undone. It ought to feel more inappropriate, or... more scandalous, she supposes, but mostly she’s just glad that there is less to impede the warmth she draws from his skin.

“Well,” he continues with a bit of a sigh, “after that it was fighting my worry for you and the others. And then the guilt.”

She knows what he’s referring to. “Percy, we’ve talked about this--”

A finger brushes inoffensively against her lips. “Yes, darling, I know. Forgiveness has been given and received. But that will never erase my deepest regret for causing to you what I did.”

Laughter escapes her, still wet with the tears she hasn’t bothered to wipe from her face. “Well, I’d say you more than made up for it, naming me Baroness of the Third House and all.” She hears him laugh and start to say something else, but she’s not entirely sure she wants to let the thought go. “Is that the only reason you did it? I mean, I know your vindictive streak, and I know your adoration for poetic justice, so I am well aware that there was a certain amount of wanting to shame my father with it in your planning for it, but...” She can’t look at him, suddenly. Her hand fists itself in the front of his shirt, and she stares at the traitorous hand with her all. “Why did you give me a title?” She doesn’t intend for it to come out quite so hesitant and unsure, but there it is anyway, like a limply loosed arrow.

The silence that follows would terrify her much more if she and Percy were not still in contact, but it terrifies her all the same to wait on his response. Were the hour more reasonable and the sun high in the sky to shed light on her poor decisions, she might not have initiated this conversation, but the moon gives courage to those who lie awake with her. Finally, Percy speaks, and it’s almost as quiet and restrained as Vex’s question. “Honestly? When I started planning on giving you the title, it was fully intended to be a continued apology. I’d been planning for weeks. I had thought about ceremony and convention and congregation to celebrate you. That... that was how I was going to present the Third House to you.

“And then... then you knocked on my door with such fear and desperation in your eyes. Not fear of a thing, or a person, but fear of perception. Fear of what others thought of you. And for as many years as I have known you, Vex’ahlia, I had never seen you give two thirds of a shit about the opinions of the rabble.” She feels his arms squeeze her, pull her close, and his chin rests on top of her head. He breathes in, deeply, and then sighs the breath out. “That upset me more than anything. The idea that a city of fools could make you think that you, at your worst, are anything but a thousand times better than any of them on their best day. You wanted to play a game in Syngorn that I had come to loathe in Whitestone from the time I was a young man, and for the life of me I couldn’t figure out why you would. So I thought to myself, ‘To hell with ceremony, to hell with the ritual of it all. I will make the most amazing woman I know a baroness in front of her shitty father, in a city of shitty people, so that anyone with a brain will know in a moment what I have been learning over and over again since I met her.’”

His words are heavy, and he says them with force; so much so that Vex leans away from his embrace enough that she can look at his expression, his eyes. They’re fierce, and proud, and there’s something underneath both of those things that is starting to scare her less and less. “And what’s that, then?”

He meets her gaze, and his face softens. “That there will never be a person on this earth that will ever be able to compare to you.”

The fist that has curled itself in his shirt relaxes, looses its grip, and lifts with barely any command from her to cup the side of Percy’s face. His stubble is coarse against her palm, but she can’t find the space of mind to care. The tears are still in her eyes. “Thank you, Percival.”

“I will say it to you every day, if need be.”

She tips his head down, and halfway to kissing him she holds back, presses their foreheads together. This is enough. For tonight, for right now, this is enough. “That won’t be necessary, but I might ask you to repeat yourself once in a while.”

Percy laughs once. “Of course.”

They stand together like that for moments longer, in the gentle glow from the moon in the window. Their tea stands cold on the butcher block, forgotten. Even the servants have stopped moving in the corridors, nothing but the night watch causing noise in the dark of the castle.

Vex pulls away, wiping at her face. “Well, I feel we both ought to try to get some sleep. I’m fairly certain I heard my brother sneak past the kitchens at least twice while we were talking, which is indication enough that such public venues should be excluded from heartfelt conversations as ours.”

“You’re right, of course, though I wonder if maybe we can get him to take notes. Lord knows he needs to learn how to have a heartfelt conversation or two.”

“Didn’t you two have one earlier today? I saw the two of you walk off on our way back to the castle.”

Percy casts a skeptical glance at her. “Who do you think did most of the soul-bearing in that encounter, hm?”

Vex laughs, wrapping her arms around his proffered and bent elbow. “Ah, yes, silly of me. We’ll teach him, eventually. He can’t keep everything locked up forever.”

“Don’t let him hear you say that, I think he might take it as a challenge.”

They laugh as they ascend the stairs to the bedrooms, quiet so as not to disturb, but loud enough for Vax to at least pretend to have been in his room and asleep by the time they pass his door. When they arrive at Vex’s, Percy pats the hand holding his arm, and then gently cups her cheek when she faces him. “Will you be alright, for the rest of the night?”

She waits a beat. “Would you stay with me if I asked?” This she says quietly, not to be overheard.

Percy nods, smiling softly. “If that was what you wanted, yes.”

The reassurance eases her mind. “Well, then perhaps I will ask one day in the future. But for tonight, yes, I will be alright, Percy.”

He nods again. “Good. Then I shall see you in the morning.”

“In the morning. Good night, Percy.”

“Good night, Vex.”

“And Percy?”

He turns, only a few steps away, looking tired but pleased, a lazy grin on his face. “Yes?”

Her door is halfway open, her eyelids heavy. She wonders how much of this conversation she will remember come daylight. “Thank you.”

All Percy does is lift a hand, bow his head, and continue on toward his chambers.

The castle, then, is silent.


End file.
